May 18, 2001: New book promotes Japan's long-life island

Reuters

Published 5:30 am, Friday, May 18, 2001

NEW YORK - Get healthy. Live longer. Go Okinawan.

This is the message of a new book that examines the lifestyles of Japan's southern island prefecture Okinawa and attempts to explain how Okinawans have attained one of the world's highest life expectancy rates.

"The Okinawa Program" is written by a set of American twins and a Japanese professor who based their research on a 25-year study of the centenarians of Okinawa as well as examining the dietary, physical and psychological factors that have given Okinawa the world's highest concentration of people older than 100.

"Okinawans may not live forever, but they are able to stack the odds in favor of lifelong health," the health professionals said in the book.

Regular exercise, psychological resiliency and the local form of spirituality help contribute to the high life expectancy rates in Okinawa, they said.

LONGER DISEASE-FREE LIFE

"Heart disease is minimal, breast cancer so rare that screening mammography is not needed, and most aging men have never heard of prostate cancer," they said, adding that Okinawans are able to spend more of their lives free of disabilities than people in other industrialized nations.

The authors said that many of the factors contributing to the high life expectancy in Okinawa disappear when Okinawans move away from home, noting that Okinawans who moved abroad have seen drops in their life expectancy.

The book was published by New York's Clarkson Potter/Publishers and hit the U.S. market this month.

According to Japan's health ministry, Okinawa has 28 centenarians for every 100,000 people.

Life expectancy in 1995 in Okinawa was 85 years for women and 77 years for men, it said.

Compared with the Group of Eight industrial nations, Okinawan women live about four years longer than women in France, five years longer than Italian women, 5-1/2 years longer than Germans, six years longer than Britons and Americans, and 13 years longer than Russians.

Okinawan men outlive the men of G8 countries such as Italy and Britain by about three years and outlive Russian men by 19.

A U.S. Navy doctor stationed in Okinawa said that as younger people in Okinawa eat more fast food and exercise less, it will be hard to maintain the high life expectancy numbers.

"The change in lifestyle and diet may lead to a drop in the average life expectancy in Okinawa," Cmdr. Colin Chinn said.